SHORE PATROL DUTY IN NOUMEA

Every ship in New Caledonia harbor was allowed to send 10% of the crew ashore for liberty while we were there. This was a forward area at that time. They were also required to furnish a certain number of men to work SP duty to control the men.

The day after my liberty day, I was assigned to SP duty ashore notwithstanding a dizzy of a hangover from the liberty of the day before.

Going ashore with the liberty party, we caught the boat and were directed to the American stockade. The men had the choice of the stockade, with two cans of free beer, or go into the small native village. Most of the sailors chose the stockade for an afternoon of drinking and relaxing under the trees.

I was dispatched to the stockade to be available and keep the peace. The afternoon mostly was watching and wandering around in pairs. I noticed that those sailors who did not drink could sell their beer for $1.00 per can. Seemed to be plenty of extra beer on the market for those who wanted more than the allotted two beer cans.

About 3 PM, I was assigned to a stake truck to go out and patrol the streets. Those sailors who chose not to go to the stockade, went in to the village and experimented with the local color and beverages. (I remembered the Tomats of the day before). I soon saw what was happening to those sailors after they bit the dust, which were many of them. Now, I knew what had happened to us the previous day.

At about 3:30, we were directed to start picking up the sailors who could not get back to the docks under their own power. There were many passed in the streets and alongside. Their dress whites were no longer very white.

We went along the street picking up those who had passed out or who needed help or were no longer able to make it back to the boat dock. We picked them up, mostly dead weight, and swung them up into the bed of the stake truck like so much cordwood.

It was a hot, dirty job, but actually rather comical. Drunks can be a handful sometimes and these guys were no exception. We got a lot of laughs, though it was hard work.

We then transported the drunks to the dock. We would line them up side by side, put their heads on the edge of dock and took their ID cards, flipped them over their head and wait for the liberty boats to come by to pick them up. Each coxswain would point to the sleeping or very relaxed sailor and say something like
“That’s our man.” We would wrestle them over the side and into the liberty boats.

After getting all the men loaded and on their way back to the ships we returned to our own ships. We got a lot of laughs from our experiences in Shore Patrol duty there in Noumea, New Caledonia.